Chip Cities Rise in Japan’s Fields of Dreams

Rice paddies that lay fallow for decades in some of Japan’s most far-flung regions are now its hottest properties. As prices surge, these areas are discovering the truth to the old adage: If you build it, they will come.

In Chitose, a city of 100,000 in the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, billboards seek recruits for the Self-Defense Forces, which saw a 50% shortfall last year. When I arrived on a fully booked plane from Tokyo packed with salarymen in cheap suits and expensive watches, it was easy to see where the competition was coming from: a half-dozen towering cranes jutting into the sky, a jarring contrast against the surrounding countryside. Thousands of construction workers are piecing together at breathtaking speed Japan’s most astonishing industrial gamble, a $33 billion bet that the country can retake the top of the semiconductor industry.